the journal of a vintage clothing aficionado for roughwear,selvedge denim and overalls fanatics....

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

IT'S UP TO YOU ......NY NY

I first discovered John Ross and Clare Romano Ross work with this beautiful little book i've found last year: ‘Manhattan Island’ by May Garelick .It was the first of many books that the couple worked on together.It's packed with great woodcuts .Clare and John both specialised in Printmaking and met in the early 1940′s when they were students at Cooper Union, and were married in 1943 just before John went to war. As artists, they also worked separately and both were professors at several colleges and universities over their careers.

In "Manhattan island" Ross and Romano's work present a portrait of life in the big city ,in all seasons and moods: the rush in the streets,the entertainment,the produces from all over the world ,the quiet and early mornings ,achieving this with a use of 3 colours cleverly arranged to get their full potential.

1 comment:

For those interested in old time illustrated books about big cities of the world and how they looked like in the last century, the Czech artist Miroslas Sasek also illustrated a whole series of similar books.His illustrations and the Ross woodcuts seem to me very similar in style and atmosphere. Thank you for opening our minds to nice things of the past , Patrick!